5lbs of Pressure

Based on director Phil Allocco's own short movie from 2005, The Mirror.

5lbs of Pressure sinks under its own weight of unoriginality and a banal script.

Adam (Luke Evans) is out on parole after serving time for killing a youth. He has returned to his own neighbourhood to connect with his estranged wife and teenage son.

His parole officer is not happy about this especially as Adam has also got a job as a bartender at the Mirror Bar. It's a recipe for disaster and Adam will violate his parole conditions.

Eli is the brother of the youth that Adam killed 16 years earlier. When he learns that Adam is back, hr wrestles with his conscience as to whether to seek revenge.

Mike (Rory Culkin) is a dim young man living under the shadow of his drug dealing uncle Leff (Alex Pettyfer.) He has looked out for Mike since his mum died.

Now Mike wants to break out on his own and score a solo drug deal. Not realising that he is too naive and idiotic.

Mike also recognised Adam as a killer. He also has an idea to rob the Mirror Bar and pin the blame on Adam.

You just know these characters will collide one night. Cheaply made with the city of Manchester standing in for New York. It's not gritty or even that interesting.

This kind of film has been done scores of time before and mostly better.

A sad tale of small-world crime, drug, revenge, drama and father's love and redemption. From beginning to end, there's brutality, sadness, throat-clamping situations and some very intense moments whether emotional or heart-breaking in a brutal way.

The character of Luke Evans deserved better, and the way the movie finished just doubled the sadness that's scattered throughout like deadly white powders.

• Screenplay/storyline/plots: 5.5
• Development: 7
• Realism: 7
• Entertainment: 6
• Acting: 7.5
• Filming/photography/cinematography: 7
• VFX/CGI: 7.5
• Music/score/sound: 7
• Depth: 6
• Logic: 5
• Flow: 6
• Crime/romance/thriller/drama: 6
• Ending: 6.

5lb of Pressure is captivating and draws you in slowly and brings it all together with deep character driven performances. You easily find yourself rooting for everyone to find their place.

Shot beautifully in tones that remind you of a past time of black & white or sepia, but the true colors of the grit of the 'any neighborhood' we all can remember shines through. It's so nostalgic of a Brooklyn I remember well, yet the neighborhood was not so recognizable. It kept me entranced and looking for a familiar place because the story was so real. Thank you Phil Allocco and your crew for your wonderful story and film.

People reviewing this movie believe they were/are the intended audience, so they are disappointed. If you've "seen it all before", then by all means, pick another show. Others who don't live in a seedy underworld and who want to try a "gritty" movie rather than horrors or rom-coms should pick this one.

It's not slow, but it has a lot of moving parts. A main part is a middle-aged ex-con who did his time and came back home when he got out to try to see his son and work things out with the old lady. His job at the bar started his last day on parole, so he didn't break any real law, just a technical one, but he was making everyone nervous because his old life was right there--nobody wanted to go through it all again and you can't blame them.

Another moving part is rory culkin's character. One reviewer described him as 'dim' and that pretty much nails it. He is ridiculed a good bit initially and something in your head keeps giving him a back seat, like he's a secondary character, but he keeps turning up, he doesn't keep his place.

Since everyone is a bad guy or living in a bad area, the backdrop can't be the local burger joint with everyone the same age talking about strip malls & surfer girls. Big surprise then that some reviewers were shocked to see crooks, clerks, sharks, parks, drugs, dudes and, yes, AA meetings- this one for addicts, not alcoholics- but it was good to include it for the potential (and oft-proven) good it brings to a bad place. People always think it's fake at first. When they see someone is improving and taking it serious, they change their mind.

That's what i like about adam. His determination. He had to stay on folks to get basic simple things done. Everyone wanted to say no or put a foot out. That happens to everyone. Some people don't know how to handle it or what you do about it. Adam does it right, he persists, and he keeps his support (AA) because he wants to be successful. You have to be young and live long enough to get old before you can see how to navigate a path for yourself. Adam has the clear focus that comes with age and mistakes while the rest of the players are just trying to manipulate events.

There is truth and tenderness in a hard and violent place, springing up like dandelions in a cracked porch with this film. It's Hope-- for families, for futures, for justice, for travel or gun control maybe, it's whatever flower you see growing there.

Don't let these jerks talk you out of a good movie. See it for yourself. I'm not the intended audience and i liked it anyway, you might too.

Poor acting. I would say everyone in this film does some pretty bad acting except Luke Evans, but even his character had the stereotypical Brooklyn accent and solemn tone. Some cliché scenes like the AA meeting where someone speaks to the group, then guess who speaks next - Luke Evans. The son looks like he's 30 but plays a character that I think is supposed to be around 17. (His mom says he's "impressionable", so that makes me think teens.) In one scene Adam (Luke Evans) says to his son that he was his age when he committed a murder. We know he was in jail for 16 years, so that would put Adam at around 33 years old, however Luke Adams is 44, and to me he looks like he's in his 50s in this film.

The drug dealer uncle, sitting at his desk in an auto repair shop with a safe on the desk is pretty lame. All the dim lighting is cliché of the seedy drug underworld. The Jamaican accent of the female drug dealer isn't very good, not a genuine accent. I can never understand why casting can't cast actors with genuine accents, especially for accents that so many of us are familiar with.

The film takes a long time to get to the real story, it was probably in the last quarter of the film that I realized where it was going. I prefer to know in the first quarter what the film is about and let it unfold from there. I wanted to stop watching it many times but was too invested to stop so I let it play, probably skipped ahead a couple times.